Charles II of England

Charles II of England (29 May 1630-6 February 1685) was King of England from 29 May 1660 to 6 February 1685, succeeding Richard Cromwell and the English Commonwealth and preceding James II of England.

Biography
Charles was born on 29 May 1630, the son of Charles I of England and Henrietta Maria of France. Charles' father was executed at Whitehall in 1649 during the English Civil Wars, and from 30 January 1649 to 3 September 1651 he reigned as king of Scotland; England, ruled by Parliament, refused to crown him as king, instead letting Oliver Cromwell rule over the Parliament-ruled English Commonwealth. When he was defeated at the Battle of Worcester on 3 September 1651, Charles was forced into exile in France, and he lived in the United Provinces and Spanish Netherlands until 1660, when he returned to England after a political crisis led to Richard "Tumbledown Dick" Cromwell and the Commonwealth being overthrown. Charles was crowned as King of England, and while King Charles agreed with religious tolerance, he shored up the power of the Church of England. In 1665, he went to war with the United Provinces in the Second Anglo-Dutch War over trade routes, and King Charles later allied with the Kingdom of France against the Dutch in the 1670 Third Anglo-Dutch War. King Louis XIV of France offered to pay him a pension and form an alliance if Charles would convert to Catholicism at a later date, and in 1679 the Exclusion Crisis began when it was found out that Charles' brother, the Duke of York (the future James II of England) was a Catholic. In 1683, he had pro-exclusion Whigs executed or exiled from England after the "Rye House Plot" to murder Charles and James was discovered, and he dissolved Parliament. Charles converted to Catholicism on his deathbed in 1685 before his brother became the new king.